711.94/234410/25
Memorandum by the Chief of the Division of Far Eastern Affairs (Hamilton) to the Secretary of State
Mr. Secretary: In your talk with the President this afternoon in regard to the Japanese proposals, you may wish to indicate that the Japanese Government’s explanation, communicated to Mr. Grew on September 13,27 of its proposals of September 628 do not appear to dispose effectively of difficulties on any of the points concerning which issues arose in your informal conversation with the Japanese Ambassador. On some points the statements of the Japanese Government are equivocal and ambiguous and some of the statements indicate a disposition on the part of the Japanese Government to narrow down and limit the application of fundamental principles with which the Japanese profess in the abstract to agree. The Japanese proposals are much narrower than one would have been led to expect from the broad gauge assurances given in the statement communicated to the President by the Japanese Ambassador on August 28.29
The Japanese Ambassador has not yet come in with the Japanese Government’s explanation and we are working on drafting comments [Page 450] that might be offered to the Japanese Ambassador in response thereto. The comments would be in the nature of comparing the earlier Japanese assurances of a broad character with the narrower commitments on specific questions as contained in the Japanese proposals of September 6 and in the subsequent explanations offered by the Japanese Government.
- See memorandum by the Ambassador in Japan, September 13, 1941, Foreign Relations, Japan, 1931–1941, vol. ii, p. 620.↩
- Ibid., p. 608.↩
- Ibid., p. 573.↩